Ring Around the Rosie
by Spattered Ink
Summary: In the beginning it had been a game. He played the game of love better than anyone. She had always been different, yearning to be spirited away to a far off land of beauty and adventure, a place where she was important. But something was terribly wrong. Ballroom retelling J/S.
1. Ring Around the Rosie

Ring Around the Rosie

In the beginning it had been a game. A boring game, to be precise, one he'd won a thousand times before. The selfish, spoiled children who'd run rampant through his wild kingdom, playing a game of life and death, was too numerous to count. Sarah had been no different, just another willful child with pale jade green eyes and a hair-trigger temper. He had played with her as an old cat plays with a mouse - almost with disinterest but with enough predatory instinct to keep up the ruse. But he hadn't been paying attention and now she was closer to the heart of the labyrinth than anyone had ever been. It was an accident on his part, a neglectful oversight. Nothing more. But it was high time he took back control.

The peach was a bit of a joke on his part, a splash of fantasy and illusion to demonstrate a universal truth about teenage girls. They all pined for the dark hero, whose raw sexuality and animal magnetism could be trapped within the structured confines of a dance of love. He played the game of love better than anyone, grace and charm mingling sweetly with the subtle taste of taboo. His gaze lingered just a little too long, his gloved hand pressed just a little too close, and his words danced just a little too close to crossing the line between suggestion and offer. He employed a piercing wit to keep them guessing, and sporadic kindness to temper the sting. They all lived to circle in his orbit, a ring of women falling at his feet in the throes of love.

But for all their fevered passion it was a game for them too. He was untouchable and irresistible, the perfect device in the game of love, where satisfaction is the surest path to defeat. Yearning, not possession, was the food of love. Without want, humankind would wither and die. So he teased and tempted, letting them whirl around him in a riot of color while remaining forever out of reach.

He kept the greatest distance from _her._ Sarah was looking for him, he knew, a sugar-spun lily in a field of damask roses. Her inexperienced heart was still searching for the fantasy of a love that lasted forever. She hadn't yet realized her greatest dream was an ephemeral phantom. Until now she'd been reaching for stars. Now he was the moon that dominated her sky. But Jareth would never admit that sometimes he tired of this orrery.


	2. A Pocket Full of Posies

A Pocket Full of Posies

She'd made a terrible mistake, she knew. Sometimes she just got so frustrated she spoke without thinking. Sometimes she was too brash and unforgiving. She could be selfish and cruel. She knew she was forgetting something important, some other mistake that was all her fault. But she couldn't remember what it was.

She was in a ballroom dressed in a gown plucked straight from her fantasies. Silver flowers were woven into her hair, and the white ballroom she was in shimmered, incandescent. She had trouble focusing - the walls seemed both near enough to create a sense of claustrophobia and impossibly far away. The air smelled vaguely floral, as though they were in a forest or garden. It was the perfect scene for a princess, missing only a perfect prince. She wanted her prince charming, needed to find him. He'd been there in her dreams, spiriting her away to a far off land of beauty and adventure. She had always been different, but this time she would be important. Beautiful figures wearing hideous masks spun around her, enchanting and terrifying all at once. They reminded her of someone.

Someone thrust a box at her and she stared at it in bewilderment. Was this hers? Was this the important thing she was missing? The strange man - was he a man? - holding the box opened it and laughed when she recoiled from the snake inside. Everything here seemed beautiful on the outside and sinister within. If this was a dream it was a somewhat alarming reflection on her subconscious. But it was all so confusing she hardly knew. Still, the dread in her stomach telling her something was wrong, terribly wrong, coiled tighter.


End file.
